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‘ “ Praise be unto the press,* not Faust’s, but Noah’s ; let us extol and magnify the press, the true press of Noah, from which breaketh the true morning. Praise be unto the press, not the black press but the...

‘In want of money ! ’ pushing back his chair as from a suddenly disclosed man-trap or crater. ‘ Yes,’ naively assented the cosmopolitan, ‘ and you are going to loan me fifty dollars. I could almost wish I was in need of more,...

While speaking or rather hissing those words, the boon companion underwent much such a change as one reads of in fairy-books. Out of old material sprang a new creature. Cadmus glided into the snake.* The cosmopolitan rose, the traces of previous feeling vanished ;...

‘In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying that inquiry.’ It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we were slowly sailing over...

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one...

The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar. ‘D’ye see him?’ cried Ahab; but the whale was not...

That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at intervals—stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will,...

Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over the anchors there hanging ‘No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but you will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how long ago...

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in December....

(Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by the light of two lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is firmly fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of all sorts lying about the bench....

Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent...

Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and...

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very springhead of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and...

It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale’s prodigious head hanging to the Pequod’s side. But we must let it continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it. For the...

Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and...

At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh. ‘D’ye see him?’ cried Ahab, after allowing a little space for the light to spread. ‘See nothing, sir.’ ‘Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought for;—the top-gallant sails!—aye, they should...